Apices in Exsilium

Hong Kong Phooey, number one super guy.
In search of Earth, flying in to the night.
He's the boss, he's a pip, he's the championship.
I never spend much time in school but I taught ladies plenty.
One for all and all for one, it's a pretty story.
Howwww! Nab him, jab him, tab him, grab him, stop that pigeon now.
Ulysses, Ulysses - Soaring through all the galaxies.
80 days around the world, we'll find a pot of gold just sitting where the rainbow's ending.
Ten years ago a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit.
I take care of both of them, which ain't easy, 'cause when they met it was MURDER!
Thunder, thunder, thundercats, Ho! Thundercats are on the move, Thundercats are loose.
If you have a problem and no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the A-team.
Hong Kong Phooey, number one super guy.
Thunder, thunder, thundercats, Ho! Thundercats are on the move, Thundercats are loose.
Can't stay for long, just turn around and I'm gone again.
Top Cat! The most

So strange...

Not that I'm even registered in my current district, but it doesn't really bother me anyway.

...voting is futile. It would be a mathematical miracle if our vote actually decided the result of an election. And aren't we all told, when we contemplate voting for a Libertarian or a Nader, that doing so is "wasting our vote" because the third party candidate "can't win"? This means causing a victory is the only way not to waste your vote.

But the result of any national election will be the same regardless of whether, or how, any individual votes. For your vote to be decisive, you would have to be a single deciding vote in the single state whose electoral votes decide the election—so unlikely it's barely worth contemplating.

As the 2000 election showed, it's not only effectively mathematically impossible that one vote could matter: it is politically impossible as well. Imagine the recounts, margins of error, and eventual Supreme Court decision if by some miracle the presidency hung on one vote.
-Brian Doherty

Here's an actual economist talking, with a more in-depth analysis.

The odds that your vote will actually affect the outcome of a given election are very, very, very slim. This was documented by the economists Casey Mulligan and Charles Hunter, who analyzed more than 56,000 Congressional and state-legislative elections since 1898. For all the attention paid in the media to close elections, it turns out that they are exceedingly rare. The median margin of victory in the Congressional elections was 22 percent; in the state-legislature elections, it was 25 percent. Even in the closest elections, it is almost never the case that a single vote is pivotal. Of the more than 40,000 elections for state legislator that Mulligan and Hunter analyzed, comprising nearly 1 billion votes, only 7 elections were decided by a single vote, with 2 others tied. Of the more than 16,000 Congressional elections, in which many more people vote, only one election in the past 100 years - a 1910 race in Buffalo - was decided by a single vote.
-Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt

If you are dead set on voting, I encourage you to vote no on everything and do what Cicero of To the People suggests:

Literally. Write in "Somebody Else" for as many races as possible. Do it. You know you want to. If you do, you will be able to say "don't blame me, I voted for somebody else".
-Cicero

Long after the thrill of livin' is gone.
After a great weekend after the specter of calamity, I have returned to my usual blah emotional state. That's not to say I'm either happy or sad; I'm just back on the gray path (). I think I've gotten the self-destruction out of my system after the smoking and the drinking and the impulse purchasing. The next time this happens, I wonder if I will exhibit a new symptom of addiction?

Oh, and I can now play Guitar Hero 2 now in good conscience, as I managed to pass Bark at the Moon finally on Friday. That was so satisfying, especially after losing so badly earlier.

To me, coming from you, friend is a four letter word.
"End" is the only part of the word that i heard.
Call me morbid or absurd, but to me, coming from you, friend is a four letter word.

When I go fishing for the words I am wishing you would say to me, I'm really only praying that the words you'll soon be saying might betray the way you feel about me.

But to me, coming from you, friend is a four letter word.

-John McRae, Cake, "Friend is a Four Letter Word", Fashion Nugget

So, I went on another date Friday. We attempted to order crazy stuff from In'n'out and then wandered around Mission Valley for a while. After aimlessly deciding that we weren't really in the mood for a drink, Michelle and I chatted in her car. Unfortunately, the classic car manufacturers of old did not design their cars for six foot tall people... and while shifting in my seat, I put my knee through a temperature gauge on the passenger side.

So embarrassing!

But we're still cool... third date here we come!

Find the bug!

boolean discoverSelected(Node node) {
  //Look at a tree node.
  if (node.isSelected()) {
    // if it is selected, all of its children should be selected.
    selectAllChildren(node);
    return true;
  } else {
    // otherwise, it should be selected if one of its children is selected.
    boolean temp = false;
    for(Node child : node.getChildren()) {
      temp = temp || discoverSelected(child);
    }
    node.setSelected(temp);
    return node.isSelected();
  }
}

ARGH! that cost me an hour of sanity!  (I've found the bug, and the code now works like I want it toooo!)

What's your favorite restaurant?

Ugh... Since I'm a chronic sufferer from some sort of Social Anxiety or Avoidant Personality Disorder, I don't like calling any of the restaurants I frequent as my "favorite."  I'm mortified by the possibility of becoming a "regular".  Whether or not that has a good connotation or not (and with my tipping practices, it should be a good connotation), I still dread people recognizing me when I go out to dinner (especially alone).

Though if put at gunpoint, my answer to this question is Islands.  So yummy.

To court her and attain her
Greetings, loyal readers. I hope this first Monday of October finds you well. Not a lot has been happening since the last time I waxed introspective, but I think an update is in order anyway. First off, I'm all caught up on House MD just in time to have to wait until almost November for a new episode (Damn you, world series!).  Jess is burning through Lost (Mostly at my insistence), and I don't remember even seeing the whole Sawyer vs. the boar episode. I remember the bar scene with Jack's dad (highlight to remove spoiler), but I don't remember anything else.

I fear my heart's in danger
I'm trying mightily to spend more time with Wum Ba, but now that I'm no longer burned out on the game (it seems to happen every six months or so), I find myself not at home during the times when everyone is on. And if I am at home, then I've been watching television on the miracle that is DVR.

From the Queen of all Argyll
So, this week looks cool. After the great ending to last week (my work gave us BEER!), the totally cool gaming with Tone et. al., and the egregious amount of time spent on the phone, this week is starting out surprisingly well. The company is having a lunch of some sort that I don't need to pay for, so hopefully that will be cool (should be... the company I work for is great.) The only terrible thing is that my brain has started itching after a Major Purchase. I really don't want to make one right now, but I may need to satisfy my wanderlust somehow. If you want to give input, the choices are: A guitar, a grown-up person bed, an XBox360, or a home-theater audio system...

Jinkies! A clue hidden in the music!